The terrible terrorist attack on innocent tourist civilians of Bharat in Pahalgam, Kashmir which took the toll of 26 persons is neither the first nor the last such attack. It was a naked, unabashed act of ethnic cleansing looking at the way Hindus were identified and targeted. It has badly traumatized the consciousness of the entire nation.
Such terrorist attacks have been going on since the early 1990s. They have occurred during the tenure of Congress as well as BJP government at the centre. They have been witnessed during the currency of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir state and after its abrogation in 2019. They have occurred during the currency of President’s rule or the rule of the locally elected state government alike.
In our subcontinent, active jihad in the name of which terrorist killings are executed is still alive. The perpetrators in Jammu and Kashmir are largely the same old perverted Pakistani religious fanatics sponsored by Pakistan military, masquerading as non-state actors. Lashkar-e-Taiba’s proxy group TRF has reportedly claimed responsibility for committing these dastardly acts. The core enemies of Bharat are obviously not the executing terrorists per se, but their state sponsors—the Pakistan Army persons.
What has been our historical response to this naked act of aggression against its state? It’s been condemnation and more condemnation, followed by painstaking combing operations by the Indian army and shooting down some or all of the terrorist militants in a rather passive and reactive retaliatory operation. We have never seen a pre-emptive action to deter or destroy these enemies of humanity on their home ground; never an all-out action against the enemy state that sponsors such terrorism.
How long will ordinary, innocent citizens of India keep falling prey to state sponsored terrorists? There has to be an end to it. And that end will come about only by a frontal strike against them—immediate and reactive this time, followed by proactive strikes on subsequent occasions to forestall such attacks.
If the Indian government does not act on the above lines now, it will be a great travesty of democracy, a grave disservice to the tens of millions of citizens who voted this government to power to, inter alia, protect their life and property.
Humanism and righteousness (eternal or sanatan dharma) is above everything else. It is the greatest retributive and balancing force in the universe. Protecting and preserving the life of its citizens is the bounden duty of every government. Delay in retributive and preventive action according to the principles of dharma this time will be a dereliction of fundamental dharmic duty. Our ancient celebrated political strategist Chanakya had declared that even cautious, calculated and strategic political action needs to be dictated by dharma—the all-powerful divine code of human conduct.
Here and now, political expediency should not be dictating government action. Measured and calibrated retaliatory action and subsequent pre-emptive action is now the government’s constitutional and moral duty towards its citizens. This is simply because the enemy state sponsored terrorists have a deeper, wider and far more baleful plan. The enemy state Pakistan has its monstrous eyes on not just Kashmir, but the whole of India. The underlying reason for partition of India in 1947 was not just creation of a separate state for Muslims but an enemy state that would check the progress of Bharat, motivated by ghazwa-a-hind, the Islamization of this ancient country. And there are inimical foreign powers supporting or backing this state of Pakistan. Can we afford to have such an enemy state continuing to exist?
Bharat’s people should answer this question. Bharat’s present government should assiduously follow Chanakya Neeti which categorically calls for ‘shathe shathyam samacharet’ that means a tit for tat strong military action now and pre-emptive strikes by our state actors or non-state actors later. That will be action in consonance with eternal dharma and we have seen it being taken successfully by Israel in the past against its enemy countries. That is the only lasting solution to this chronic problem. Failure by the present government to act promptly and firmly this time is going to cost the nation heavily—this is abundantly evident. It is the matter of our survival as a nation. If we don’t decimate our enemy now, we are in for our own doom and destruction in the foreseeable future.
